Silk Road rogues: Federal agents arrested for theft, extortion, fraud

Two federal investigators working on the black-market website Silk Road went ‘breaking bad’ along the way, claims a DOJ document, charging them with a variety of crimes including Bitcoin theft and extortion.

The Department of Justice indictment charges 46-year-old former Drug
Enforcement Agency (DEA) special agent Carl Mark Force IV, and
32-year-old former Secret Service agent Shaun W. Bridges, with
wire fraud and money laundering. Force was also charged with
theft of government property and conflict of interest. The
federal criminal complaint was issued on March 25 in the Northern
District of California, but was sealed until Monday.

Force and Bridges were part of the Baltimore-based federal task
force charged with investigating Silk Road, the underground
marketplace for illicit goods and services shut down by the FBI
in 2013. The website’s creator, Ross Ulbricht, denied federal
accusations that he operated the site under the name “Dread
Pirate Roberts.”

Ulbricht was convicted in February 2015 on seven criminal
charges, including drug trafficking, money laundering, and
computer hacking. Sentencing in the case was scheduled for May
15. Ulbricht’s lawyer has reportedly requested a retrial,
however, following the revelations that two of the federal
investigators had engaged in criminal activities of their own.

According to the DOJ indictment, agent Force “developed
additional online personas and engaged in a broad range of
illegal activities calculated to bring him personal financial
gain.” The government claims he “engaged in complex
Bitcoin transactions to steal from the government and the targets
of the investigation,” diverting funds into his personal
account. Moreover, Force allegedly created two fake personas, one
to try and extort $250,000 from “Dread Pirate Roberts” (Ulbricht,
according to the federal indictment) and another to sell him
information on the government investigation for $100,000. The
latter identity was identified in the DOJ report as “French
Maid.”

Bridges is charged with diverting $820,000 in Bitcoin that he
acquired during the investigation into a personal account at a
Japanese exchange Mt. Gox. He allegedly wired the funds into a
personal investment account in the US, “mere days before he
sought a $2.1 million seizure warrant for Mt. Gox’s
accounts,” the DOJ document says.

Force was arrested in Baltimore on March 27. Bridges surrendered
on Monday, the DOJ said in a statement, adding “The charges contained
in the complaint are merely accusations, and the defendants are
presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.”

In October 2013, when federal investigators announced the charges
against Ulbricht, they called Silk Road “the most sophisticated
and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet,” and claimed
that several thousand vendors used the exchange to sell a variety
of illicit goods to over 100,000 customers. The site reportedly
generated over $213 million in revenue, and Ulbricht was charged
with taking in millions of dollars in commissions.

Federal task forces in New York, Chicago and Baltimore examining
the Silk Road. Investigation by the Baltimore team, of which
agents Force and Bridges were a part, resulted in charges against
Ulbricht for hiring contract killers. Those charges were not part
of the main trial, however, and the case is still pending.